McCartney Split: $peculation Abounds

What Will Become Of Former Beatle's Fortune?

(CBS/AP) 
She must also have found it difficult to step into the shoes of Linda McCartney. But it was barely two years after Linda died of breast cancer that Paul told Hannah Storm of The Early Show that he'd found someone else.

"Someone like myself, you know, is very lucky to get a sort of second chance really, because after having lost Linda, which was such a tragedy in my life, I wasn't sure whether I would find a good woman again," he said.

"It's great to be in love, and she's a great support. She's a pretty cool gal," McCartney said.

Mills McCartney has also been accused of meddling in her husband's career — such as the dismissal of his longtime publicist Geoff Baker — and even of influencing him on issues as diverse as dying his hair and plastic surgery.

At one point, McCartney felt forced to defend his wife publicly. In a statement on Mills McCartney's personal Web site, McCartney posted a note blasting the media and denying the rumors, including suggestions that his children disliked their new stepmother.

Mills McCartney is a former model and a vociferous animal-rights campaigner who recently traveled with McCartney to eastern Canada to fight that country's seal hunt.

On that trip, they appeared happy and professional, an Associated Press reporter who accompanied them said.

In 1993, Mills' left leg was amputated below the knee after a motorcycle accident, and she became active in campaigning to remove and ban landmines.

She has responded in kind when it comes to public support of issues McCartney cares about, and in March she accompanied him to an ice floe off the coast of Canada to take a stand against the annual fur traders' hunt of baby seals.

But not everyone was convinced this was as selfless as it seemed, Palmer reports. McCartney's children from his first marriage were said to have disliked Heather from the start.